38
"Please believe that I am falling apart.
I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug - that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams."
the act of collapsing multitudes into the single body of Saleem literally disintegrates him — perhaps this is why trying to shove all of reality into a single box is a disease — it is bound to end in death and ruin everything?
but even as Saleem's body disintegrates, he tries to counter that by writing